Summary of Main Points

*An education student was given the assignment of selecting a lesson plan from a credible site online and presenting it to her class
*she was encouraged to adapt/modify the lesson to suit her needs, but was also
allowed to use 'as written'
*she chose to use it "as written"
*She taught a math lesson focused on showing the difference between forming combinations when order mattered and when order didn't matter using ice cream flavours as her demonstration
*After completing the lesson, her professor pointed out that all of the answers given in her lesson were mathematically incorrect (the answers given in the lesson plan were actually the opposite of the correct answers (her peers had actually given the correct answers, but she informed them that they were incorrect based on her 'answers')
*The student claimed she had taught the lesson exactly as she had found it on the website (and she was right, the site actually had the same errors)
*The significance of the error would have been huge in a real elementary class (students would have been confused about whether order matters when forming
*Both the student and professor acknowledged and recognized that even though the lesson plan had come from a reliable site, errors could still be found.
*The professor contacted the authors of the lesson plan site and they fixed the mathematical errors on that lesson plan and several others on their site that also contained errors
*Moral of the story is...teachers should never just deliver a lesson exactly as seen on the internet (or anywhere for that matter) without first working through the questions/assignment/task first. AND just because something is on the internet does NOT mean it is correct

experiences of our own

Mike Nantais suggests we might want to use this kid's experience as a launching point for some reminiscing of our own...

Throwing it Out There

Hi Group (and class):

I want to throw this question there...hopefully to evoke some more discussion.

Does anyone have a personal experience they can share that relates to using an internet resource without assessing its accuracy or credibility? Some life lessons persay that could be related to our article?

Vanessa's First Impressions and Ideas

My first thought about this article is that the student didn't seem to have very good critical thinking skills, and she wasn't following good teaching practices. I thought it was common sense that you should try an assignment before giving it to your students. I always do that so I know what the answers are before working it out with my class-I hate looking like I don't know what's going on. In this lady's case, I would think she would want to be extra prepared, since she was presenting infront of her classmates and faculty. I can understand that sometimes in your own classroom things get a little crazy in life and I might pull something off the internet and hope that it works out but that is definitely NOT the right way to use resources from the internet.

This article points out the importance of practicing what you teach. We are constantly being told in the Ed faculty that critical thinking skills are the most important thing we can give our students. I would assume that the woman in this article had received similar prompts from her professors, yet she didn't use any critical thinking skills when she received the lesson. This would be a good case to use as an example in a class where you are teaching your students about critical thinking in relation to the internet. The fact that this lesson was taken from a very respected and credible website and yet still had these huge errors helps illustrate the point that just because it is on the internet does NOT mean you can believe it.

I want to play the devil's advocate for just a moment. As much as we critique resources from the internet and say that they contain inaccurate information, the same can be true for written sources. I have had many textbooks and exercise books throughout my time as a student that contained errors. So basically, I'm saying that critical thinking skills need to be utilized with all information sources-it's not a new phenomenon that can be linked specifically to the internet.

I would also question this specific student's math abilities if she didn't question the answers since my basic math brain is shouting out..."THIS DOESN"T MAKE SENSE!"...but the answers to the math problem are really besides the point of this article.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts and other opinions about this article...lets keep the discussion going!

Article Details

As part of our reading club assignment, we need to include the bibliographic information about our article and the details of how we searched for it.


Vasko, F.J., and Peterson, W.J. (2007). Can teachers trust the world wide web for classroom lesson plans? TechTrends. 51(5), p 53-54.

We found this article through the ERIC (Education Resources Information Center) database. Our search terms were: Education AND Society AND Internet

Yet to Come

Hi Group. I just wanted to let you know that I am not abandoning the group. I just haven't gotten around to reading the article yet. That's my job for tomorrow. I'll be sure to have some thoughts posted soon.

Margaret's response

Initial response

I quickly scan the article and it seems very confusing! That being said, I will read the article and comment on the article by this weekend. But, just the title itself- is a scary thought!

jessica's response

Basically, I think this is ridiculous. I can't imagine teaching a math lesson and giving solutions in it that I hadn't figured out on my own. I have no idea how you can explain a concept unless you've actually worked with it yourself. But to be fair, that's not even the main point of the article. I guess the big idea is that internet use sometimes threatens our intellectual 'guardedness'...

As teachers, it will be our job to train students in proper use of the internet. Looking at this topic earlier for this course, we established some guidelines for helping students discern which sites are reliable are which sites aren't. But the crazy thing is, the site this candidate teacher found her lesson plan on would have been approved by all those guidelines no problem. She got her error-riddled lesson plan off a professional site. So the lesson for all: there are no shortcuts for critically evaluating, all the time.

Loni's Response

I thought that this article was quite interesting. I do agree with the fact that you cannot believe everything that is on the internet. As an upcoming teacher, reading this article was a good reminder for me of how important it is to be careful with what I bring into my classroom that I have found off the internet.

the article

Hey, so this is the article we'd like to discuss:

Can Teachers Trust the World Wide Web for Classroom Lesson Plans?
By Francis J. Vasko and Winnie J. Peterson

We found it here:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/hu50h7214402q187/fulltext.pdf